Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Maps
- Preface
- Part I A Prepared People
- Part II Hermetic Purity and Hermetic Danger
- 4 A Urim Spiritual
- 5 Alchymical Experiments
- 6 I Was Born in Sharon
- Part III The Mormon Dispensation
- Appendix The Sectarian and Hermetic Circumstances of Mormon Origins in Vermont and New York
- Abbreviations Used in Notes
- Notes
- Index
4 - A Urim Spiritual
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Maps
- Preface
- Part I A Prepared People
- Part II Hermetic Purity and Hermetic Danger
- 4 A Urim Spiritual
- 5 Alchymical Experiments
- 6 I Was Born in Sharon
- Part III The Mormon Dispensation
- Appendix The Sectarian and Hermetic Circumstances of Mormon Origins in Vermont and New York
- Abbreviations Used in Notes
- Notes
- Index
Summary
We have received some pressious things through the Prophet on the preasthood that would cause your Soul to rejoice. I can not give them to you on paper fore they are not to be riten. … We have established a Lodge here of Masons since we obtained a Charter. … Br. Joseph [Smith] and Sidny [Rigdon] was the first that was received into the Lodg. … [T]hare is a similarity of [Mormon] preas hood in Masonry. Bro. Joseph ses Masonry was taken from preasthood but has become degenerated. But menny things are perfect.
Heber C. Kimball to Parley P. Pratt, Nauvoo, Illinois, June 17, 1842We have the true Masonry. The Masonry of today is received from the apostacy which took place in the days of Solomon and David. They have now and then a thing that is correct, but we have the real thing.
Heber C. Kimball at Salt Lake City, Utah, November 9, 1858Mormon theology and mormon conversion rested in great measure on the accumulated traditions and predispositions of prepared peoples, traditions and predispositions shaped in great measure by familial connections and oral culture. But they also rested on more contemporary experiences with eighteenth-century reformulations of hermeticism, experiences shaped by influences coming from the broader culture, influences that were often carried by the culture of text and print. On the one hand, the rise of Freemasonry over the eighteenth century, compounded by the Romantic revival of the occult in the 1780s and 1790s and fused with a renewed millenarianism and dispensationalism, carried the promise of the restoration of ancient truths and even Adamic powers.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Refiner's FireThe Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644–1844, pp. 91 - 104Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994